Shadowing Practice: Appetite: Ghrelin and Leptin Explained - Learn English Speaking with Video

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hey guys

so today's video is going to be on appetite control i'm going to be talking about the two main hormones

that regulate appetite so that includes ghrelin and leptin

and these guys are here to make sure

that you either don't get too fat or too skinny

so you don't have too many calories or too few by controlling hunger behavior

so because they're homeostatic hormones they obviously are going to act on the hypothalamus

so they each act on a different region of the hypothalamus

and either trigger hunger as in the case for ghrelin or satiety as in the case for leptin.

So let's get into a couple of details about ghrelin here.

So ghrelin is our appetite hormone.

An easy way to remember this is that when you're hungry your stomach growls.

So GHR for growl and that is for appetite.

All right

so this ghrelin hormone is produced by X cells in the stomach they release it into the bloodstream

and it travels to the lateral hypothalamus in the brain

this then causes the hunger response so it causes you to go seek and look for more food

all right another function of ghrelin is

that it's going to prepare the body for this food

so this ghrelin is going to go ahead

and act on the stomach itself and it's going to increase gastric motility

and gastric acid production to prepare the body for the food

that the lateral hypothalamus just ordered ghrelin is induced by two major inducers

so hypoglycemia and low body weight

so let's say you have low blood sugar as in the case for hypoglycemia or low

or you're very thin as in the case of low body weight you're going to want to fix

that by eating more food

an inhibitor for ghrelin includes stomach distension so

if you see over here on the diagram on the right distending the stomach is going to decrease ghrelin

and decrease appetite because you have a bunch of food in the stomach

and you don't eat anymore all right so let's hop over to leptin

so leptin is our satiety hormone and it is produced by our white fat

so these white adipose cells over here are going to produce our leptin

and as these cells go bigger and bigger and bigger they're going to produce more and more leptin.

So the fat is kind of doing a negative feedback on itself.

So fat produces more leptin.

This goes to the ventromedial hypothalamus.

Then we're going to get inhibition of food intake and the fats kind of get smaller.

So the fat is controlling itself in this case.

And an easy way to remember that leptin is produced by fat cells is

that I think of L for lipid and L for leptin and

inducers for leptin include insulin and emotional stress

so let's say you have high blood glucose you're going to have high insulin

and that's going to induce leptin say let's stop eating our blood sugar is high enough

and then emotional stress

so let's say you're running away from a tiger

you don't have time to think about those yummy blueberries in the bush

you're too busy devoting all your energy to fight or flight

so those are inducers for leptin so let's not be hungry in these cases.

And then inhibitors for leptin include short -term fasting.

So let's say you haven't eaten for eight, nine hours, your leptin response is going to be inhibited and ghrelin is going to take over.

So both ghrelin and leptin are in your system all the time, just the levels are different.

So sometimes ghrelin is higher and you're going to feel hungry and sometimes leptin is higher and you're going to feel satiated.

Let's talk about the hypothalamus for a second.

So these hormones are produced in the stomach and in the fat, and they're going to travel up to the hypothalamus,

and they're going to act either on the lateral or the medial hypothalamus.

So here in purple, we have the lateral hypothalamus, and here in blue, we have the medial hypothalamus.

So what does the lateral hypothalamus react to?

That's right, it's going to react to ghrelin, so it's going to cause you to be hungry.

Now in this case, the experimenters lesioned it, so they cut the lateral hypothalamus in these mice.

What's going to happen to this mouse?

Well it's going to get thinner because now our leptin is our predominant hormone

and it's telling the mouse I'm full all the time I don't need to eat

and ghrelin can no longer act on the lateral hypothalamus.

All right so let's say we lesion the ventromedial hypothalamus these two blue dots right here.

Well now ghrelin response is going to be more predominant

so our mouse is going to feel hungry all the time

and it's going to be fat

so we need a balance between these two hormones to get

our mouse just in the right weight range where it's not undernourished or overnourished.

An easy way to remember this is

that our lateral hypothalamus makes you grow laterally so

if we draw a guy over here let's say this is a skinny guy

and then this is a fatter version of himself so lateral hypothalamus makes you grow laterally

while the medial hypothalamus makes you grow medially, so you're going to get thinner.

Okay, so that's an easy way to remember this.

Okay, so let's do a little bit of a clinical correlate before we end off here, just to hammer the point home.

So here we have two obese people, but they're obese for different reasons.

Over here on the left, we have someone with Prater -Willi syndrome, which is a mutation on chromosome 15.

Now Prader -Willi does a bunch of things,

but one of the things it does in correspondence with ghrelin and leptin is that it increases ghrelin levels.

So now this man is going to feel hungry all the time and that's the cause for his obesity.

In contrast over here this small child has congenital obesity, so what that causes is an insensitivity to leptin.

So our medial hypothalamus right in here blue is no longer sensitive to leptin

which means this child does not feel satiated

at all so they're going to keep eating and eating

and eating so in both these people the ghrelin response is overactive in here

because they're on the right because there's more ghrelin

and on the left because there is an increase on decrease in leptin sensitivity

so ghrelin response is going to be more active in congenital obesity as well as Prader -Willi.

So that's often tested on boards just in case you want to remember these small facts.

All right, so I hope this video helped.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, and I'll see you in the next one.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Appetite: Ghrelin and Leptin Explained”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: ghrelin, leptin, hypothalamus, lateral, fat. This video has 93 sentences and 1167 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:31. The speaker talks at a natural 179 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
lateral adjective	/ˈlætəɹəl/	Situated on one side or other of the body or of an organ, especially in the region furthest from the median plane.
hormone noun	/ˈhoɹmoʊn/	Any substance produced by one tissue and conveyed by the bloodstream to another to effect physiological activity.
stomach noun	/ˈstʌmək/	An organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion.
hungry adjective	/ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/	Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food.
mouse noun	/maʊs/	Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.
appetite noun	/ˈæp.əˌtaɪt/	A desire to eat food or consume drinks.
thin adjective	/ˈθɪn/	Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite.
decrease verb	/dɪˈkɹiːs/	Of a quantity, to become smaller.
hunger noun	/ˈhʌŋɡɚ/	A need or compelling desire for food.
obesity noun	/ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/	The state of being obese.
react verb	/ɹiːˈækt/	To act in response.
skinny adjective	/ˈskɪni/	Thin, generally in a negative sense (as opposed to slim, which is thin in a positive sense).
insulin noun	/ˈɪnsəlɪn/	A polypeptide hormone that regulates carbohydrate metabolism (in various animals including humans).
obese adjective	/oʊˈbis/	Extremely overweight, especially: weighing more than 20% (for men) or 25% (for women) over their conventionally ideal weight determined by height and build…
induce verb	/ɪnˈduːs/	To lead by persuasion or influence; incite or prevail upon.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end off verb		Synonym of end up.
go ahead verb	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	To proceed with; to begin.
run away from verb		To avoid or shirk a problem or consequences; to rush to back away from or disclaim responsibility for something.
see over verb		To inspect something fully.
take over verb		To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 26 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, they're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, mutation /mjuˈteɪʃən/, lesion /ˈliːʒən/, satiate /ˈseɪʃɪeɪt/, distension /dɪsˈtɛnʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: obesity /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/, sensitivity /ˌsɛn.səˈtɪv.ə.ti/, correspondence /ˌkoɹ.ɪˈspɑn.dəns/, congenital /kənˈdʒɛnɪt(ə)l/, inhibitor /ɪnˈhɪbɪtɚ/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like lateral, hormone, stomach.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Appetite: Ghrelin and Leptin Explained - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?